It was when the Jews were in Exile and in adversity that the synagogue first came into
being. Far from the Temple, which lay in ruins in Jerusalem, the Jews in Babylonia wished
to maintain their religious life to whatever extent possible. Since they could no longer
offer sacrifices to the :Lord in their own sanctuary, "so will we render for bullocks
the offering of our lips."

Prayers Instead of Sacrifices
Thus the institution of formal prayer was established and given priority over worship by
sacrifice. Even though the synagogue had not formally come into being, Jews who lived in
scattered communities throughout the river country of Babylonia congregated on the Sabbath
and during the festivals for prayer as well as for public discussion of communal problems.
They intoned prayers and sang hymns and psalms in unison. They felt drawn together by the
warmth and fervour of common beliefs and rites. In this group life they found an island of
safety in a sea of hostility.

The institution of prayer took such a firm
hold in time that after the Return and following Ezras innovations, the popularity
of animal sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem sharply declined. Often enough, the
offering of more agreeable incense was substituted. Implicit with ethical meaning, a more
spiritualized conception of divine worship was evolving. No one in ancient Jewry described
this substitute for altar sacrifice better than a contemporary of the last days of the
Temple, Philo, the philosopher-rabbi of Alexandria. "Though the worshippers bring
nothing else, in bringing themselves they offer the best sacrifices, the full and truly
perfect oblation of noble living, as they honor with hymns and thanksgivings their
Benefactor and Savior, God."

One of the profoundest changes effected by
the synagogue was to bring communion with God directly and easily to the worshipper.
Whereas before the Jew could only worship Him through the spectacular mediation of the
priest and by means of the material sacrifice he could afford to offer, now he was enabled
to commune with Him simply and unrestrainedly at all times. It was either with a prayer on
his lips or a wordless prayer in his heart. The Jewish priest-caste thus began withering
away, and a large class of rabbis and teachers took its place even before the
Temples final fall. By means of common prayer and the study of sacred writings
fraternal bonds of an indestructible kind were wrought. The religion of Israel had thus
become both spiritual and democratic in the deepest sense of the words. Historically it
was an event without parallel.

Many Sanctuaries Instead of One
Thereafter, wherever Jews lived in any community where a minyan, or a quorum, of
ten male worshippers could be mustered for public prayer, it was obligatory for them to
build a synagogue, and so the entire community life of Jews began to center around it.
True enough, the pious were still expected to go on pilgrimages to the Holy City during
the three great festivals of the year. The Temple, however, had been transformed from the
sole sanctuary into a great national religious shrine where the most impressive
sacrificial rites were still performed. But the hearts and the minds of the people turned
increasingly to the local synagogue. It represented, even if not the most dramatic and
spectacular, certainly their most intimate, daily religious experience.

The very word synagogue is derived
from the Greek synagogéand means "assembly" or congregation.
Henceforth, it was the "togetherness" of the Jews which marked their history and
their activities. It welded and integrated them by means of a common way of life. The Torah
and the synagogue thereafter constituted their religious, cultural and psychic center.

All in Israel Are Brothers
The functions of the synagogue after the Destruction were many, and they applied to almost
every aspect of Jewish community life. The synagogue was simultaneously a House of Prayer,
a House of Study and a House of Assembly. Moreover, it was also a House of Charity and a
House of Judgement. It was there that the distribution of clothing to the poor and of matzohs
and wine to the needy on the of Passover Eve took place. It was there that societies
of the pious were formed and met to take care of every kind of benevolence and mutual aid
required within the community. There were societies to visit the sick, to bury the dead,
to comfort the sorrowing, to lend money without interest to the needy, to feed and clothe
orphans and widows, to provide dowries for penniless girls, to help raise ransom for some
afflicted fellow-Jew or Jewish community and to redeem Jewish slaves. This practice of
mutual aid in the concrete works of compassion for the suffering and the needy, this
identification of the individual Jew with all other Jews led to the coining of the famous
saying, "All in Israel are brothers."

When the Jewish people were dispersed and
fragmentized it was the institution of the synagogue which not only held the Jews together
but gave them the identity and the moral strength to endure. The destruction of one, or
even of a hundred, synagogues did not mean the end of everything as ithad
when the Temple was destroyed. Synagogues could always be replaced by other buildings on
the original sites or elsewhere. The original concept of the Temple was deepened enlarged
and universalized.

In the course of several centuries,
synagogues sprang up every city, town and village of Judea. There the children were taught
and their elders studied the Torah and heard expounded. In far-away Alexandria, in
Persia and the Crimea. in Babylonia and Yemen, in Rome and Greece, in Syria Asia Minor and
wherever else there were Jewish communities Jewish life became centered in the synagogue.
Tradition has it that in Jerusalem alone there were 394 synagogues at time when the Temple
was destroyed by Titus.

Architecture of the Synagogue
It may be accepted as a truism that, no matter how segregated Jews were from the rest of
the population in whose midst they lived, they, nonetheless, were exposed at all times to
local cultural influences. The architecture of the synagogue and its interior decoration
always reflected local and contemporary styles. In Hellenistic-Roman times Jewish houses
of worship bore all the well-known features of Greek and Roman architecture. Later, in
medieval Spain under the dominant influence of Islamic architecture, the synagogue was
built in classic Moorish style. Subsequently, in other parts of western and southern
Europe, the synagogue was designed according to prevailing architectural fashions,
Byzantine, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Barogue, and still later styles in turn. In
Russia and Poland, where in later times most of the Jews of the world came to live, the
ancient synagogues outwardly resembled the various styles of church architecture current
there. This held somewhat less true of the Polish wooden synagogues (seventeenth to
eighteenth centuries), which reveal a striking Mongolian pagoda" style. This may have
been due partly to the lingering influence of the refugee Khazar Jews from the East.

Nonetheless, however polyglot and different
the styles of synagogue architecture were, they succeeded in preserving certain classic
features which were fixed by tradition. The interior, for instance, had to consist of a
vestibule, the hall of the synagogue itself and the Aron ha-Kodesh, the holy Ark or
chest containing the Scrolls of the Law, which was built into a niche in the wall. In
these features the synagogue perpetuated the principal architectural elements of the
Temple in Jerusalem. Naturally, like the Ark that stood in the Holy of Holies, the Ark in
the synagogue also constituted its holiest spot. In memory of the Temple it was mandatory
that it face east, toward Jerusalem. No effort or expense was considered too great to make
it beautiful. It was usually flanked by pillars with sculptured lions standing guard
before them, and an eight-branched menorah in the center. A perpetual lamp glowed
like an all-seeing eye before it, and the Tables of the Law, modeled in relief with the
Ten Commandments in Hebrew upon them, stood crowned above it. Over the Ark hung a curtain
of red silk, brocade or velvet embroidered with decorative religious symbols in gold and
silver thread. The Ark was usually carved with flowers, leaves, birds, lions, deer and
fanciful arabesques, hut no specimen has ever been found bearing any representation of the
human face or figure.

Although the Talmud attempted to lay
down directions for the construction of the synagogue, these proved so vague and even
contradictory that they could not he followed except as a general guide. Since nothing
created by man remains static, synagogue architecture, too, underwent a gradual
development in which non-Jewish national and local influences by no means played an
unimportant part. For example, an innovation during the Graeco-Roman period was the
erection of the Bimab, meaning "stage" in Greek, or as it was later
called, Almemor, a word derived from the Arabic "alminbar," pulpit.

Until very recent times it was generally
assumed that the art of the synagogue rigidly forbade any representation of the human face
or figure in sculpture. relief or painting. It was based on the assumption that the Mosaic
commandment against the making of images, which \vas to discourage idol worship, was
strictly observed by Jews. however, excavations of ancient synagogues during the last few
decades have demonstrated how wrong that belief was. In Beth Alpha, a sixth century c.e.
synagogue in Palestine, a remarkable floor mosaic was found. It was of Hellenistic design
and workmanship and, startlingly enough, showed human faces! Far from this being
considered heretical by the Jews of those days when the Talmud was being created,
the synagogue carries this enthusiastic memorial in Greek: "Blessed are the creators
of this work, Marianus and his son Chanina."

The discovery in 1932 of the synagogue at
Dura-Europos in Syria proved even more astonishing. The entire wall surface of this house
of worship, built in 245 c.e., was covered with frescoes Graeco-Roman in style and
strikingly similar to those found in the Greek temple of Zeus Theos. Each fresco was
painted by a different artist, an indication that there were a considerable number of
accomplished Jewish painters in that period. The wall-paintings are on such Jewish
religious and historic themes as the Temple in Jerusalem; Ezra the Scribe reading from the
Scrolls of the Torah; the finding of the infant Moses in the bulrushes; David being
anointed king and the apocalyptic vision of Ezekiel. To show to what extent Greek culture
had infiltrated into Jewish thinking in those days there is even a fresco showing David
the harpist in the role of Orpheus, holding animals and beasts in thrall with his music.

During the Renaissance, representations of
the human face, although not of the entire body, were sometimes permitted by the more
advanced rabbis of Italy and Provence. This we have on the authority of the religious
leaders Rabbi Leona da Modena of Venice and Rabbi Profiat Duran of Perpignan.

In the ruins of the most ancient
synagogues, even in those of Kfar Nahum, or Capernaum, which existed in the days of the
Second Temple, recognizable Jewish religious symbols have been found. Perhaps the most
surprising was the Magen David, the star of David, found in Kfar Nahum. It was used
as a decoration on one of the capitals. This is of special interest because, according to
the Christian gospels, Jesus of Nazareth preached there. It is undoubtedly the earliest
star of David ever found. It was not until modern times, though, that the Magen David became
accepted as the universal symbol of the Jewish faith and people. Actually, for more than
two thousand years and until modern times, the menorah or seven-branched
candlestick and the Tables of the Ten Commandments were the principal symbols. They have
figured inevitably in the decoration of synagogues and Jewish tombstones since the
nineteenth century.

Of course there are a number of other
Jewish religious symbols, although of lesser significance. These are the shofar (rams
horn), the lulav (palm branch), the ethrog (citron), the lion of Judah,
layers, shovels, oil jars and other vessels and utensils used in the Temple service, the
royal crown of the Torah, and the hands of the cohen or priest outspread in
benediction. Not the least popular of these symbols has been the circular Zodiac with its
signs for each lunar month in the Jewish calendar. Since Hellenic times it has graced many
a ceiling, and sometimes floor, of the synagogue structure